In many welding applications, the properties and composition of the weld joint metal can be a combination of the base metal or workpiece metal and the welding consumable. For example, in some applications the weld joint metal can be as much as 50-50 admixture of base metal and consumable. This can significantly affect the strength, durability and physical properties of the resulting weld. Thus, the selection of the proper consumable can be important to the resulting weld. In such instances the selection of the proper consumable is important, but should be based on the base metal composition. In many applications it is difficult for a welder to determine the composition of the base metal to then identify the proper consumable. Further, even if the base metal composition is known, a welder may not know the exact composition of the consumables available, and thus could have difficulty identifying the proper consumable to achieve the desired weld metal composition. Thus, it is important to select the proper consumable for a given welding operation and a given base metal.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional, traditional, and proposed approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such approaches with embodiments of the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.